A Cup of Rice

"It happens in the inbetween."

I woke up this morning to a newsletter in my inbox that I forgot existed. That probably happens to you too, while Flynn and I are off making sandwiches, or documentaries, or doing burlesque, or making million dollar marketing deals, respectively. The letter came from Ella Risbridger’s lovely and weird You Get In Love and Then You Die, and today’s letter was about Fennel, Lentil, Sausage soup. It’s also about a lot of other things, as all of her excellent work is (you may recall my undying obsession with her incomparable cookbook Midnight Chicken: And Other Recipes Worth Living For considering I mention it every other newsletter or so). 

In it she talks us through her lentil soup recipe as part of the conversation, between bits about the chill in the air, writing a book during soup season, her new Le Creuset from her dear one, how dragging a book out of your brain is like trying build a violin case without ever seeing a violin, and how making art is translating a part of yourself for other people — all in a flow state like you’d get if you were cooking together in her kitchen. At the end of it, you have soup, you are nourished, and she has accidentally described my creative process exactly:

“Writing, actual writing, happens to me only in the stages between the lentils going in and the lentils getting soft. It happens in the inbetween when I don’t look directly at it. Everything else is about making a world where the writing can happen: about making a place where the dream won’t drift away.”

I don’t know this person, but I love her, and I think you should subscribe to her newsletter. 

This morning I also woke up to Sean creeping upstairs from where he’d slept on the couch (because I have a cold and was snoring too loudly for him to live), hunched over in that particular way that lets me know he is very uncomfortable and unhappy. He was shivering with the expected but hoped against hangover from the booster shots we got yesterday, having acquired the low-grade fever, body aches, chills, and brutal headache that we both got with every other shot. Perhaps because actual Covid already made me miserable for the second half of July, my body gave me a tiny break and let me continue to just have the dry cough and headache I’ve had all week anyway, from the time-to-relax-in-the-fall cold I inevitably get each season. I’d forgotten about it, because taking precautions against Covid had also kept me from getting sick at all for the past two years, which is a lesson I feel like we’re all not learning at the pace we should. 

“Both of you eat some soup,” Kiah texted us, and I knew she was right and that I needed to get to work. 

I have weirdly never made congee before, despite it being one of my favorite things to eat. I’d never had it until my Uncle Mitch swung a lazy susan around in my direction at Congee Village one night, and as soon as I dipped my wide, metal spoon into the molten goop — this one studded with squid and ginger and a lash of chili oil — I knew I was going to need to eat it for breakfast a lot.

This morning, digging through our comparatively bare cupboards (I actually don’t remember the last time I went to the grocery store for our house), realizing I was about to make soup at 10am for someone who was going to be napping on the couch until at least noon, I thought I’d give it a whirl. Congee, like its cousins from other cultures — grits, risotto, like, they’re all basically gruel but goddamn can we make them delicious — requires that you both pay attention and not pay attention. You must baby it and leave it the fuck alone in equal measure. It will never come to a boil while you’re staring at it, but if you forget about it too long, that mother fucker will stick to the bottom of the pot. 

While the rice, stock and aromatics came to a boil, I thought about how hard it’s been to get rice this summer because of droughts in India and Pakistan, and how researching each new supply chain issue can lead you down such a spiral of awful new realities. I felt grateful for the big bag I’d just split into quart containers and tucked into the cupboard. Sean and I have talked a lot this week about how many scary things seem to be coalescing globally these days, and how no one seems to be running around screaming about it. Are we all just too tired? 

I’m always blown away by how much food you can get out of a single cup of rice; in this case I made congee for basically six by accident. I had just enough ginger and garlic on hand to make this feel positively curative, and I soft boiled two eggs that I soaked in soy sauce, mirin, black vinegar and sugar after I peeled them. 

Sean was still sleeping off his fever, so I soaked some dried shiitakes in boiling water until they were soft enough to slice into the congee, and then let it all rest until he was awake. It took over an hour, but I needed an excuse to pace around thinking, and that’s always when I want to write to you. 

Listen to This Shit: I Made You A Playlist
“Townie Summer” on Apple Music

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Congee with Garlic, Ginger, and Shiitakes

Adapted from Yvonne Ruperti’s recipe at Serious Eats

1 cup rice
6 cups chicken stock (I have embraced the glory of chicken base and used that)
1-inch piece ginger, sliced thick
2-3 cloves garlic, sliced thin
1 to 2 cups water
Kosher salt
White pepper to taste

Bring rice, chicken broth, ginger, garlic, and 1 teaspoon salt to simmer in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Reduce heat to low and gently simmer, stirring and gently mashing occasionally, until rice is softened, broken down, and mixture is creamy and the consistency of porridge, 60 to 75 minutes. Keep a kettle of warm water on the stove with you to adjust consistency as it cooks (I ended up using all 2 cups to keep the congee from sticking and getting too thick).

That’s… it? Now you get to tailor it to your (and the contents of your fridge’s) specifications. I soft-boiled two eggs, marinated them in soy, mirin, black vinegar, and sugar. I topped it all with a spoonful of chili crisp. I wished I had some scallions. We ate like kings.

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You’re reading “Soup and Despair,” a (sometimes) weekly newsletter by Sarah Flynn and Rebecca Orchant. It’s about food, feelings, and surviving the dark times. If someone forwarded you this email, it’s because they love you and they want you to eat. You can subscribe to it too!